CRYPTO GRIND: NAS VS. 50 CENT

Another rough week in crypto — risk shedding is in full effect. Keep the umbrellas up and remain in quality for now: BTC and ETH. Ripple (XRP) continues to get monkey-hammered, off another 23% this week — worth doing your homework on the name or reading ours, a real blockchain business with an addressable market (this is not CryptoKitties).

JAPANESE CRYPTO HEIST

Japan’s Coincheck exchange lost $500 million of NEM tokens.

Coincheck, one of Japan’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges stated that it lost $500 million of NEM tokens (4% of market cap), impacting 260,000 customers, the scale of the loss is in line with Mt. Gox ($500m).

The latest announcement on Sunday stated that the company would repay investors from company funds. A few more colossal exchange fuck-ups like these and the regulators will have no choice but to red tape the whole thing.

50 CENT vs NAS

50 Cent’s decision to accept Bitcoin for his 2014 album Animal Ambition is proving to be a rather sage move. The over 700 coins are now worth $7-8m. While 50 stumbled into his stake of bitcoin, Nas (of Illmatic luminary distinction) was locking in venture capital deals for companies across the crypto universe — his early investment in Coinbase the most notable.

Coinbase is now churning out $1b in trading revenue per year…. some tweet their success, others just own the fucking stadium.

Thomas has over 17 years of global institutional investment management experience. At TD Asset Management he was Director of Global Resources and lead Portfolio Manager for over $1 billion of global equities (resource and sustainability funds). Thomas is a Chartered Financial Analyst and has been featured on BNN Bloomberg, CTV, Benefits & Pension Monitor and the National Post.